I wonder if working in another program might be more suitable. I haven't used Publisher much, but if you have access to it within your Office suite, perhaps play around with that. Check to see if you have Publisher installed as part of your Office Suite (sometimes it is not installed by default but you actually can add it).

Maybe someone will have a better solution. Some ideas in the meantime:

-I don't like columns with word wrapping around images, but I think that is how folks tend to create books, newsletters, etc. in Word.
-Tables with invisible outer and inner borders might work, but that does not sound fun.
-You could insert rectangles of matching height (like invisible web-page css "divs") and give them no fill or border (but leave the border on until the end and then remove so that you can see them). You could then stretch them as needed to take up space. I'd say this is the least desirable of all, but if you like to visualize the page as divs, maybe it will work for you.